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Question: have the average file-sizes of websites gone up proportionately to bandwidth increases? It seems to me like bandwidth has increased enormously, but fi

Question: have the average file-sizes of websites gone up proportionately to bandwidth increases? It seems to me like bandwidth has increased enormously, but filesizes have capped between 600k–1 megabyte. Shaving tenths of seconds off pageloads might not be as important as improving the speed of render.

jacobr 14y ago
Has the average bandwidth of web users really gone up, if you include the increase of mobile usage?
- demallien 14y ago
  I can't speak for every country, but as I work for a French telecom, I happen to know the figures for this on our own network. Firstly, the vast majority (around 80%) of browsing on mobile devices is going through wifi. It turns out that at least in France, most people that use mobile devices seem to use those devices in areas where they have wifi available (at home, or in the office) most of the time. This of course means that as soon as you increase landline data speeds, you also increase mobile data speeds, because most mobile usage is routed through landlines. Secondly, even when clients are out and about, they often have 3G coverage which is not too far off wifi speeds (a typical 3G connection has about a third of the bandwidth of a typical landline/wifi connection). OK, it's a third of the speed, but it's the same order of magnitude, and it only applies about 20% of the time. What this means is that a mobile user is getting data at (100 * 0.8) + (33 * 0.2) = 86% bandwidth of a landline connection. This means that a 16% increase in landline bandwidth would be enough to balance out everyone moving to mobile devices. Landline bandwidth has of course improved a lot more than 16% in the last few years, and not everyone has moved to exclusively mobile device web-browsing. So yes, I think it's fair to say that the average bandwidth of web users has gone up, at least in France.
  - pacaro 14y ago
    1/3 is not the same order of magnitude in base-3 or less, I tend to think in base-2 at least as much as base-10 when considering order of magnitude issues. Put another way, if I coded something where the performance delta was 1/3 or 3x, I would certainly be complaining or bragging about an order of magnitude change.
    - Shorel 14y ago
      Order of magnitude without any base specified is commonly understood as being base 10, and it is extremely confusing to use other bases, as no one else uses them as 'orders of magnitude'. You can talk about logarithmic scales without risk of confusion.
- jsight 14y ago
  On T-Mobile in the US, my 3G (HSPA+) frequently sees 13Mpbs down and ~5Mbps up with latencies of <50ms. That's higher than the average broadband connection in the US, AfAIK (for reference, my home wired connections is 6Mpbs up and down).
- bduerst 14y ago
  I'm staying at a Hyatt right now for my job. My cell phone has faster internet than the hotel does.
benologist 14y ago
Sizes have kept pace with broadband to ensure most of the internet still feels like dialup.
- Lagged2Death 14y ago
  No kidding. Today's front page at theverge.com is 11MB. That's something like 20s of transfer time alone at 6Mbit/s.
youngtaff 14y ago
More bandwidth is not the answer for webpages... The overhead of TCP and HTTP make latency the limiting factor - see Mike Belshe's "More Bandwidth doesn't Matter (Much)" - http://www.belshe.com/2010/05/24/more-bandwidth-doesnt-matter-much/ http://www.belshe.com/2010/05/24/more-bandwidth-doesnt-matte...
driverdan 14y ago
Yes, page sizes have steadily increased over time. See http://httparchive.org/ http://httparchive.org/

jacobr 14y ago

Has the average bandwidth of web users really gone up, if you include the increase of mobile usage?

demallien 14y ago
I can't speak for every country, but as I work for a French telecom, I happen to know the figures for this on our own network. Firstly, the vast majority (around 80%) of browsing on mobile devices is going through wifi. It turns out that at least in France, most people that use mobile devices seem to use those devices in areas where they have wifi available (at home, or in the office) most of the time. This of course means that as soon as you increase landline data speeds, you also increase mobile data speeds, because most mobile usage is routed through landlines. Secondly, even when clients are out and about, they often have 3G coverage which is not too far off wifi speeds (a typical 3G connection has about a third of the bandwidth of a typical landline/wifi connection). OK, it's a third of the speed, but it's the same order of magnitude, and it only applies about 20% of the time. What this means is that a mobile user is getting data at (100 * 0.8) + (33 * 0.2) = 86% bandwidth of a landline connection. This means that a 16% increase in landline bandwidth would be enough to balance out everyone moving to mobile devices. Landline bandwidth has of course improved a lot more than 16% in the last few years, and not everyone has moved to exclusively mobile device web-browsing. So yes, I think it's fair to say that the average bandwidth of web users has gone up, at least in France.
- pacaro 14y ago
  1/3 is not the same order of magnitude in base-3 or less, I tend to think in base-2 at least as much as base-10 when considering order of magnitude issues. Put another way, if I coded something where the performance delta was 1/3 or 3x, I would certainly be complaining or bragging about an order of magnitude change.
  - Shorel 14y ago
    Order of magnitude without any base specified is commonly understood as being base 10, and it is extremely confusing to use other bases, as no one else uses them as 'orders of magnitude'. You can talk about logarithmic scales without risk of confusion.
jsight 14y ago
On T-Mobile in the US, my 3G (HSPA+) frequently sees 13Mpbs down and ~5Mbps up with latencies of <50ms. That's higher than the average broadband connection in the US, AfAIK (for reference, my home wired connections is 6Mpbs up and down).
bduerst 14y ago
I'm staying at a Hyatt right now for my job. My cell phone has faster internet than the hotel does.

benologist 14y ago

Sizes have kept pace with broadband to ensure most of the internet still feels like dialup.

Lagged2Death 14y ago
No kidding. Today's front page at theverge.com is 11MB. That's something like 20s of transfer time alone at 6Mbit/s.

youngtaff 14y ago

More bandwidth is not the answer for webpages... The overhead of TCP and HTTP make latency the limiting factor - see Mike Belshe's "More Bandwidth doesn't Matter (Much)" - http://www.belshe.com/2010/05/24/more-bandwidth-doesnt-matter-much/ http://www.belshe.com/2010/05/24/more-bandwidth-doesnt-matte...

driverdan 14y ago

Yes, page sizes have steadily increased over time. See http://httparchive.org/ http://httparchive.org/